a mental health and wellness blog

“I shouldn’t eat that cookie.”“I should really work out.”“I should call my mom.”“I shouldn’t go out to eat tonight.”

How many times in a day do you find yourself thinking in terms of “should” and “shouldn’t”? If you’re anything like me, the answer to that is probably a lot. Especially if you’re an anxious person, odds are good that your mind runs that should/shouldn’t narrative pretty regularly.

What’s the big deal? Every time you think in terms of should or shouldn’t, your brain is telling you that for whatever reason, you aren’t good enough the way you are. Depending on your narrative and your own personal brand of insecurities, that can mean a lot of things. Every “should work out” and “shouldn’t eat that cupcake” reminds you that you aren’t happy with your weight. Every “should stay late at work” or “shouldn’t wait until tomorrow to check my work email” reminds you that you don’t think you work hard enough. Our days are a constant barrage of shoulds and shouldn’ts, which is a constant reminder that you aren’t enough the way you are. These reminders can also lead to massive guilt if you don’t follow through on your should/shouldn’t. Now not only do you view yourself as overweight/lazy/bad with money/anti-social/whatever your insecurity is, but you can’t even do this one little thing to make it better. I’m sure you can imagine what an ugly cycle that can lead to.

How do you stop the should/shouldn’t narrative? This part’s a little tricky. We all know that telling yourself not to think about something is a surefire way to have it doing a constant conga line through your brain. Here’s what I want to avoid:

Your brain: I should really work out tonight.Your brain: Wait — I shouldn’t be thinking the word “should.”Your brain: Crap, I shouldn’t be thinking “shouldn’t” either.Your brain: Dammit!

So what to do instead? Try these four steps:

Think of the consequences and rewards.

Check your priorities.

Change the “should” or “shouldn’t” to a “will” or “won’t.”

Follow through.

I know it seems like kind of a lengthy process, but I promise it won’t take more than a few seconds. Here’s what it looks like:

Statement: “I should work out tonight.”Consequences vs. Rewards: If I work out, I’ll burn some calories and improve my mood. On the other hand, I worked out pretty hard last night, and my muscles are really fatigued. If I don’t work out, I can rest my body and spend some time doing other things that are important to my self-care.Check your priorities: My health is my top priority. How will that best be served?Change the narrative: Tonight, I will not work out. I will do ten minutes of light stretching, and I will spend the rest of my usual workout time doing things from my self-care lists.Follow through: This might be obvious, but do ten minutes of light stretching, and spend the rest of your usual workout time doing things from your self-care lists.

And here’s another one, just for fun:

Statement: “I shouldn’t go out to eat tonight.”Consequences vs. Rewards: If go out to eat, it will definitely be delicious and I’ll get to spend time with a friend I don’t see very often. If I skip it and eat at home, I will save some money and probably eat something healthier.Check your priorities: My priorities are my health, my budget, and connecting with people I love. How will that best be served?Change the narrative: I will not go out to dinner. I will invite my friend over for a homecooked meal at my place instead.Follow through: Explain to your friend that you want to see them but you’d rather stay in, then cook a killer meal for them that will make them forget why they wanted to go out in the first place.

It’s that simple. It might be hard at first, but it will become second nature before too long. If you start to feel guilty about the choices you make, go back to your consequences vs. rewards and remind yourself: you made the choice that was the best for you right now, and that’s awesome!

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I don’t know what the weather’s like where you are, but we had a few really gorgeous days in Chicago this week. For some reason, I’m always surprised by the lift in my mood and energy levels when it starts to get warm out.

This year, I thought I would try to capitalize on that upswing and do a little spring cleaning. As I may have mentioned, I’ve been pretty depressed lately, and I got it into my head that I would magically be fixed if I could just get my apartment sparkly clean. That probably goes back to my need to control my depression. Don’t get me wrong, a clean and organized space can do wonders for your mental health, but ultimately, the best way to improve my mental health is to go straight to the source.

This year, instead of focusing all of my (somewhat limited) energy on cleaning my apartment, I’m going to focus some of that good, productive energy toward a little mental health spring cleaning. So without further ado, here’s my Mental Health Spring Cleaning List:

Get rid of toxic relationships. Examine your relationships, both romantically and otherwise, and ask yourself some questions: does having this person in my life make me happy? Is this person a positive influence in my life? Does this person encourage me to be the best version of myself? If you answered no to any of those questions, it might be time to reexamine your relationship. If you come to the conclusion that it’s a toxic relationship, cut them out of your life. You don’t need to apologize or explain yourself, you just need to move on and find people who make you happy and build you up.

Clean up your social media. We all have those friends whose posts drive us crazy, but we’ve never bothered to do anything about it. Now’s your chance! Unfriend, unfollow, or block the people whose posts don’t make you happy. No need to feel guilty — your main goal here is making your social media experience as enjoyable as possible. Bonus: find some folks (especially on Instagram or Twitter) that inspire you and make you happy and follow them (you can even start with Finding the Way to Well)!

Fix your self-talk. Start paying attention to the way you talk to yourself throughout the day. If you catch yourself in negative self-talk, ask yourself this: would I talk to my best friend like that? If you struggle with depression or low self-esteem, odds are good that the answer to that will be a resounding “hell no.” Change your inner monologue and start treating yourself with the same compassion with which you’d treat your best friend. You’re worth it!

Make your self-care a priority. Whether you’re someone who struggles with mental illness or not, self-care is the single most important thing you can do for your mental health. Read this post about establishing a self-care routine, and then do it! If you have a routine but you’ve let it slide lately, work harder to stick to it. If you have a plan and you’re sticking to it, yay you! Try to find little things you can do to make your self-care even better, like journaling or meditating.

Change one bad habit. No matter how good you’ve gotten at self-care, we all have bad habits that can harm our mental health. It could be that you consistently stay up too late or hit the snooze fifty times, that you apologize constantly when you don’t need to, or that you say yes to everything because you feel guilty for saying no. Whatever your bad habit is, decide to change it and stick to that decision. Make your mental health a priority! And on the flip side of that…

Establish one new good habit. What’s one thing you’ve wanted to start doing, but you’ve never taken the time to do it? Daily yoga? Daily meditation? Journaling? Find something that will improve your mental health and make it a daily habit! If deciding to do something every single day is too daunting, set smaller goals. Aim to practice your habit three or four days a week to start out. Once you see the positive effects of your brand new habit, you just might be motivated to start doing it more often.

Start focusing on the positive. You know those frustrating little things throughout the day that make you shake your head and ask “why me?!” Well, take the time to find the positive in life’s little annoyances. You might be surprised what a difference it makes to actively look for the positive. If you’re feeling ambitious, check out the Positive 30 Challenge that I did and give it a try!

It doesn’t matter if you do one thing or do all seven, just make the choice to make your mental health a priority this spring! As lovely as it is to have a clean house (and it probably wouldn’t hurt to do a little spring cleaning there too), doing a little mental health spring cleaning will be way more helpful in the long run.

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I tried to write like four different posts this week, and I just couldn’t do it. I stared at my computer screen endlessly, willing the words to not sound like garbage. The writing was bad, I felt like a fraud, I couldn’t complete my thoughts. It just wasn’t going well. I chalked it up to writer’s block, a lack of original thought, and not getting enough sleep, because I didn’t want to face the fact that’s been staring me in the face for several weeks: I’m really freaking depressed.

My therapist very gently brought up this possibility in my last session when I was complaining about being tired all the time, crying and getting angry even more easily than usual, and irregular sleep patterns. Just, I don’t know, your basic depression symptoms. I brushed her off. Surely I couldn’t be depressed. I’ve been practicing self-care, taking my medication (even when people are jerks about it), exercising, eating relatively well, and getting (almost) enough sleep. How could I possibly be depressed?

Fast forward to Wednesday night (a mere two days later), as I sit on my bathroom floor crying on the phone to my mom in the middle of the night. Touché, therapist. Touché. Once again, my therapist proves how brilliant and insightful she is. (Seriously, if you need a recommendation for a good therapist in Chicago, let me know.)

I feel a little ridiculous for not catching it sooner, but the fact is that I didn’t want it to be depression, because that would mean that I didn’t have as much control over it as I thought I did. Don’t get me wrong, all of those self-care things are vitally important, but sometimes your brain chemistry gets screwed up and there’s only so much you can do without changing your medications or spending some serious time with a therapist.

So I’m writing this instead. I’m writing this because I know that there’s a 100% chance that at least one of you had a shitty week too. Maybe you’re one of the lucky people for whom this week was awesome. Hell, maybe it was the best week of your life. If you’re one of those people, yay you! Feel free to bookmark this post for a rainy day and go back to your shiny, happy life, because this post isn’t for you right now.

This post is for the people whose week sucked. The people who had to scrape the bottom of their emotional energy barrel just to drag themselves out of bed, put on pants, and interact with the world. The people who had to work so hard just to compose their face into something that vaguely resembled “friendly human,” so no one would ask them “who died?” or tell them how terrible they look. This is for the people who had a regular run of the mill bad week and the people who were just feeling a little grumpy for no good reason, but it’s also for the people who spent every waking moment thinking about hurting or killing themselves.

Here’s what I have to say to you: you matter. Every single one of you reading this is important to me and to the rest of the world. This shitty day, week, month, or even year does not define you, and won’t make up your entire future. Even if you’re in the worst pain you can imagine, I swear to you that the good days will come back. You will be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it. You are strong (I know this because anyone who struggles with stuff like this and keeps going has to be strong), and you can make it through this week. In the words of my beautiful, brilliant best friend Anna, if Monica Lewinski can make it through 1998, you can make it through this crappy week.

The bad stuff isn’t permanent, even when it feels like it couldn’t possibly get any better. You are strong. You are important. The world needs you, and I need you. Keep fighting the good fight. I’ll be here for you.

Feel free to email me at findingthewaytowell@gmail.com or find me on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter if you want to talk. If things are really bad, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1(800)273-8255. Please. There’s no shame in asking for help when you need it. Your life is too important not to.

Here’s a picture of Mostaccioli sticking his tongue out like a doofus, if you needed a smile.

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This has been a rocky couple of weeks for me. I’ve had a lot going on lately, so my self-care routine has kind of fallen by the wayside. The obvious result of this has been that I’ve been experiencing a super fun (not) cocktail of anxiety and depression. This is my first rough patch since moving in by myself (which I guess has only been three weeks), and it’s a whole different experience. I tend to withdraw when I’m depressed and/or anxious (like a lot of people), and that’s a whole lot easier to do when you live by yourself.

When I’m anxious, I ignore calls, texts, emails, and Facebook messages, not because I want to withdraw or isolate myself, but because the anxiety of responding — especially if I’ve been MIA for a few days — is too overwhelming. When I’m depressed, I’m already using what little energy I have to get out of bed, get dressed, and get through the work day before collapsing into bed again. When I’m anxious and depressed, I don’t have the energy to conquer the anxiety of responding, so then I go awhile without responding, which in turn makes me feel anxious because I feel like people are mad at me, and then I worry so much that I have even less energy to conquer it…well, you get the idea.

I know I’m not alone in this. So how do you maintain connections with your support system when all you really want to do is hide under a table until people leave you alone?

Send out a mass message. Whether it’s a Facebook post, a tweet, a group text, or anything else, just let people know what’s going on. You don’t need to go into detail, just let them know that you’re having a hard time and you’ll get back to them as soon as you can. Here’s what I posted on Facebook a couple of days ago:

This served two purposes: it let people know what was going on, which eased up on the guilt a little, and it encouraged people to reach out to me and tell me they loved me, which I desperately needed. I know some people might be resistant to this because it seems like a “cry for help,” but I’ve never really understood that negative knee jerk reaction to that. There’s nothing wrong with crying for help when you need help. In fact, I think it’s a great idea! Cry away.

Do a little extra self-care. First things first, if you’ve been slacking on your regular self-care routine, do your best to get back on track. Then you can try to squeeze in a few things from your “wants” and “extras.” I don’t know about you, but when I’m not doing well, the first thing to go is my self-care. Then I feel even worse, which makes it even harder to get back on track. It’s another one of those vicious cycles. If you can get back on track with your self-care, not only will it make you feel better because you’re taking care of yourself, but it will also remind you that you’re worth the time and effort required to take care of yourself.

Make plans. I know this is the absolute last thing you want to do, but it will help. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Pick your closest friend or family member, one you know won’t judge you if you haven’t showered or your house is a mess, and make some plans. Even if it’s just inviting them over to eat takeout on the couch with you, it will help. It’s always good to spend time with people who love you, and it will help break that endless cycle of negativity that your brain can get stuck in when you’re not doing well.

Be honest. Odds are good that if you have close friends or family who know you well, they’re going to notice when something’s wrong. When people ask me what’s wrong, I used to always respond the same way: a big fake smile and a cheery “Everything’s fine! I’m just tired.” You know who I was fooling? No one. Lying will only make you feel more isolated, and the people closest to you will probably know that you’re lying anyway. Again, you don’t have to get into the vivid details, but if someone asks you what’s going on, tell them. Just say “You know, I’m not doing well right now. Can you come over and hang out with me?” Look at that, you accomplished two things right there. Yay you!

Share your small victories. You don’t have to blast it all over social media, but if you just did something little that seemed huge, share it with someone who will understand. Here’s a text I sent to Anna last night:

I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 missed called and voicemails, so this was a BIG deal for me. Not to mention how stressful I find listening to voicemails. Anna knows all these things about me, so it felt super rewarding to share this little victory. Even if it’s something as small as taking a shower or putting on pants or not crying at work, share with someone who will get it! And if you don’t have anyone in your life who will get it, get some better friends, and then tweet @ftwtwblog and tell me about it! I promise to be super impressed by you.

Cut yourself some slack. It’s okay to not be doing well. It’s not your fault. Sometimes it seems like you’ll never be okay again and that everyone in your life is going to abandon you because you suck at getting back to them, but they won’t. Everything will be okay, I promise.

If you feel like you can’t talk to the people in your life, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me via e-mail at findingthewaytowell@gmail.com, on Twitter and Instagram at @ftwtwblog, or post in the Facebook group. I’m a really good listener. If things are really scary and you need to talk to someone ASAP, please please PLEASE call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 (800) 273-8255.

Stay safe and keep your head up. People love you, and it’s all going to be okay!

**NOTE: I’m going to start posting more regularly, instead of throwing a post up whenever the spirit moves me. Now you can look for new posts every Friday! Woohoo!**

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Happy Valentine’s Day, loves! Whether you’re single or in a relationship, I hope you’re showing yourself and your favorite people some extra love today.

In honor of this love-centric holiday, I figured it was high time to write a piece that’s been on my mind for a long time. Loving someone who has any kind of mental illness can be tricky, especially if you’re not someone who’s ever struggled with it. For today, I’m going to focus on the most common mental illness: depression.

Every person is different, but here are my basic guidelines for showing love to a person with depression, whether it’s a special occasion like V-Day or any regular old day.

Ask them what they want. This one can be hard, especially in a new relationship, but it’s so important. Grand gestures are great, but for someone who’s depressed they can be really overwhelming. When you’re planning something for a holiday, a simple question a few weeks out like, “Hey, how do you feel about surprises?” can make a big difference. The second, equally important, part of this is to listen to them. If they tell you they don’t want to go out or exchange gifts, surprising them with reservations at a fancy restaurant and an extravagant gift runs the risk of making them feel worse.

Do something to make their life easier. If you love someone with depression and you know they hate cleaning the kitchen, surprise them with a sparkling clean kitchen. Run errands for them. Clean the cat litter. Take their car in for an oil change. If it’s a new relationship/friendship and you don’t feel comfortable doing those things just yet, offer to cook dinner and clean up afterwards, or offer to help them do something you know they don’t enjoy. This may not seem super romantic, but a clean litter box and a fridge full of groceries shows me how much you love me way better than a bouquet of flowers.

Keep their limitations in mind when making plans. I know for some people, dressing up and going out somewhere fancy can help pull them out of a depressive episode, but this doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes the stress of having to shower and compose yourself enough to go out in public can be overwhelming and awful. If you know your significant other or friend is going through a depressive episode, skip the surprise this year, and let them be a part of the planning. Find a way to celebrate that doesn’t take so much energy that it’s draining. Go see a movie, eat somewhere casual, or make a fancy meal at home.

Help them with self-care. Do something that you know will help their mental health, whether it’s something big like a professional massage, or small, like prepping their lunches for the week or filling their prescriptions. If they’ve made a self-care list, that makes it even easier. Help them get the needs done and throw in some of the extras. It might not seem big and romantic, but I promise it will make a huge difference.

Remind them that your love is unconditional, and follow through. Depression sneaks in and tells you that no one really loves you, that everyone who tells you they love you is lying, and that everyone you love would be better off without you. Combat those nasty thoughts by telling your friend/partner/loved one that you will always love them, rain or shine, good days and bad, laughing or curled up on the bathroom floor sobbing. Say it and mean it. When they do have a bad day, make good on those promises and keep on loving them as loud as you can.

Happy V-Day from my Valentine to yours!!

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Hi friends! What did you do for the Super Bowl yesterday? Did you go to a party and eat lots of delicious junk food? Watch it at home with your family? Skip it entirely and watch the Puppy Bowl instead? My life is pretty hectic right now, so I watched the Super Bowl at home while I unpacked and prepped my meals for the week. Tech rehearsal for Treasure Island every night this week means prepping breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day. Kind of exhausting.

The Super Bowl was a non-stop thrill ride at our house.Anyway, as I watched the Super Bowl this year, I couldn’t help but think about last year’s Super Bowl. The day of the 2015 Super Bowl was the day before I was admitted to a mental hospital, and the day my mental health hit rock bottom. I’m sure there will come a time where the only association I have with the Super Bowl is happiness and lots of delicious food, but this year, all I could think about was the negative stuff. Most of the time I can see how amazing it is that I’ve come so far, but yesterday the bad memories started to overwhelm me.

I don’t know if it’s my mental illness or just my nature, but my default setting is to fixate on the negative side of things. I’ve caught myself falling into that negative spiral a lot lately, so I decided to start making a conscious effort to focus on the positive side of things instead. And you know what? It’s made a difference. It’s getting easier to focus on the positive, and I’ve even noticed a change in my body when I shift my focus to the positive, like a giant weight is being lifted off my chest.

Whether you struggle with mental illness or not, I’m confident you’ve gotten trapped in a negative cycle a time or two before. Have you ever overslept, and then everything else seemed to go wrong for the entire day? Some of that is just the universe conspiring against you (sorry), but some of it is a snowball effect. If you hadn’t been wrapped up in how frustrated and flustered you were about being late, you probably wouldn’t have spilled coffee down your front or locked your keys in your car. What if you had chosen instead to take thirty seconds, breathe deeply a few times, and think about how much your body will benefit from the extra hour of sleep and how lucky you are to live a life where you won’t get fired for being late once? You might have still had a bad day, but it might stop that snowball effect of everything being awful all day.

Let me say that I’m not trying to suggest this as a “cure” to mental illness. I understand that sometimes you’re really depressed or anxious and you just can’t focus on the positive, and that’s okay. I’m saying that if you train your brain to start focusing on the positive when you do have that choice, it might be just a teeny, tiny bit easier to do that when you’re not at your best. And who knows? Maybe you’ll see other benefits too. You won’t know until you try.

For the next thirty days, I want you to find one thing a day to which your immediate reaction was negative, and find a way to spin it. I’m going to do my challenge primarily on Instagram, but you don’t have to. Feel free to use any social media platform you choose, or none at all. If you’re more comfortable, leave comments on the blog, or just write it down in a journal every day and post/tweet/comment at the end to let me know how it went.

Here’s the official Finding the Way to Well Positive 30 Challenge in a neat, tidy numbered list:

Pick one thing per day for thirty days that you immediately reacted negatively to (a parking ticket, a flat tire, a new haircut, etc.).

P.s. If your immediate response to this is a massive eye roll and the thought of “Oh my god, not another stupid challenge,” examine that response and how negative it is. I’m just saying. No one ever got hurt from having a little extra positivity in their lives.

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This morning I woke up all congested with the beginnings of a killer sore throat. I really, really don’t have time to get sick right now. I’m in a production of Treasure Island out in Skokie that opens in a week, which means 16 hour days every day next week. Plus I just moved into a new apartment last weekend (pics to come!).

I don’t have anything planned tonight or tomorrow, so I made a grand plan to do what I always do when I get sick: sleep for sixteen hours straight, eat my weight in gluten-free macaroni cheese, and not leave my couch. Then I started to think about how much I’ve improved my self-care game in the past few months, and I realized that my plan for the weekend probably wouldn’t be great for my mental health. I set out to revamp my sicky plan to protect my mental health, and here are the five best tips I came up with:

Take a shower. Any time I start to feel bad, mentally or physically, the first thing I do is take a shower. It’s like hitting the reset button. Take a long shower, enjoy the steam, take longer than you usually do to get clean, then put on clean, cozy pajamas. If you’re going to be sitting on the couch for most of the day, it’s way more enjoyable when you feel like you aren’t sitting in your own filth. Besides, the steam will help if you’re congested, so it’s a win-win.

Leave the House. I feel like I got hit by a really mucus-y truck, and the last thing I want to do is get up off my couch. It’s February in Chicago, and my apartment is warm and smells nice and has all the internet and food I could wish for. That being said, the longer you sit around doing nothing, the harder it’s going to be on your mental health. You don’t need to do anything strenuous, just head outside for a few minutes. If you can afford to, pick up a little something that’ll make your convalescence more enjoyable: a hot tea from your neighborhood coffee shop, trashy magazines, Vicks Vaporub. That way you get a little Vitamin D and fresh air and you have something to look forward to when you get home.

I highly recommend a furry cuddle buddy.

Eat your veggies. I am a junk food eater when I’m sick. I love eating mac and cheese, pizza, fast food — basically any food that gives me an entire day of calories in one meal. As delicious as that might be, I know I’m not doing myself any favors, mentally or physically. Eat foods that are high in Vitamins C, D, and B12 to help your immune system and give your mood a little boost too. Eat balanced meals instead of loading up on empty carbs. Try this awesome soup for a little comfort food that won’t make you feel gross afterward. Especially if you’re someone who struggles with your weight, eating high-fat, high-calorie foods is just going to leave you feeling bad, mentally and physically.

Be mindful of your cold meds. If you made your self-care plan, you (hopefully) established a baseline by cutting out addictive stuff for a while. That probably means that you’re becoming more in tune with how your mood and your body react when you take OTC medications. Since daytime cold meds are uppers and nighttime cold meds are downers, they’re probably going to affect your mood if you’re taking them regularly for a couple of days. Avoid taking more than one or two doses in twenty-four hours if you can, and definitely aim to be off them in three days.

Give yourself permission to rest. It’s really, really hard for me to lay around and do nothing. Between work, blogging, rehearsals, and keeping up an apartment by myself, I always feel like there’s something I “should” be doing. This mentality is really dangerous when you’re sick, because it means you’re beating yourself up every minute that you’re lying on the couch doing nothing, which can lead to a pretty nasty downward spiral. Your job when you’re sick is to get well. You’re not doing anyone any favors by showing up sick and half-assing your responsibilities because you’re too sick to do things well. Lay down. Watch trashy television. Drink fluids. Rest. Rest. Rest. Your health is the most important thing you have, so treat it gently.

I hope these tips can help keep your mental state healthy, even when the rest of you isn’t.

**Social Media Note: I’ve resolved the thumbnail issue we were having with sharing the blog to Facebook, so share away!**